A Force of personal history
There’s a special connection between “Star Wars” and its fans. Their passion is unlike anything else in pop culture, trumping even the tweens in love with One Direction. Boy band adoration burns bright but never lasts.
As a movie nerd of a certain age, I obviously like “Star Wars. I just never went bat crazy about it. Maybe it’s because I was born after the original trilogy ended, and my experience with the franchise has always been several degrees away from the greatness many of you experienced in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Thanks a lot, Jar Jar Binks.
While I’m sure I watched parts of it on television, my first full viewing of “A New Hope” happened in 1997 with the theatrical release of the “Special Edition,” which featured updated CGI effects and some unnecessary tinkering. People were pretty steamed about Greedo and Han’s blaster exchange, and there I was, not being able to tell you what a Greedo was or why Harrison Ford hated him so much.
After that screening, I did the proper thing and acquired the original, un-tinkered trilogy on VHS. I watched them, loved them, and wished I could see those versions on the big screen instead of the diluted brand. I went to the “Special Editions” of “Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” in the theater anyway, because everybody deserves to see a “Star Wars” on the big screen.
“The Phantom Menace” arrived while I was in high school, and the anticipation for it matched the insanity we’ve been seeing this year with “The Force Awakens.” People went nuts. They bought piles and piles of Jar Jar Binks toys before they saw the movie!
At the time, “The Phantom Menace” didn’t seem that bad. I saw it in the theater a couple of times and enjoyed the pod race, Liam Neeson’s particular set of skills and that pointy-faced dude with the double-lightsaber. But even us dumb high schoolers knew something was off.
I remember how I had to be convinced by my cousin to see it a third time. He said, “Yeah, it’s not the best, but it’s still ‘Star Wars.’” His words are the most optimistic thing you can say about the prequel era.
Today, people hate “The Phantom Menace.” They hate Jar Jar Binks, even though he’s not half as irritating as little Jake Lloyd playing the adorable wee Darth Vader. The second installment of the prequel series, “Attack of the Clones,” arrived my senior year of high school. I remember it being so much better than “Phantom Menace,” if only because Samuel L. Jackson had more than five minutes of screen time.
But time hasn’t been kind to “Attack of the Clones,” either. The first half’s insipid love story is basically unwatchable, and you’re better off watching the last hour as an extended prologue to the third installment, “Revenge of the Sith.”
“Sith,” which arrived in 2005, is almost a good movie. I gave it a positive review in my college newspaper, probably because Sam Jackson had even more screen time than ever before. While it’s the best movie of the prequels by a mile, the wooden acting, stilted script and over-reliance on CGI ultimately hobbled a movie filled with some truly inventive action sequences.
To a younger generation, the prequels and its “Clone Wars” spinoff content are what define the “Star Wars” franchise. Given how accustomed they are to the noisy blockbusters of modern Hollywood, I don’t know if the original trilogy has enough mayhem in them to properly stimulate their screentime-addicted brains.
Still, the prequels aren’t a total loss (credit George Lucas for not just repeating the greatest hits of his original movies), and kids are better off with them than, say, the “Transformers” movies
Now we have “The Force Awakens,” a movie that, at least based on reviews and initial reaction, leans hard on nostalgia for the original trilogy. True fans are supposedly guaranteed to love “The Force Awakens” because it abandons the sensibilities of those overstuffed sequels.
As someone with no real emotional connection to “Star Wars” (alas, no Sam Jackson this time) I’ll just say this: Enjoy “The Force Awakens” for what it is — a pretty good movie made to jumpstart a ridiculously lucrative stage of a dormant franchise. It can provide echoes of the “Star Wars” you loved, but it can’t give you the exact experience you had when you first fell in love with it.
Nostalgia is a powerful force, but it can’t recreate the past.
Weekend Challenge: Read as many articles about “The Force Awakens” as you can and see how many of them end with some play on the word, “Force.”
Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com